Restaurateur comes home to Weymouth

A boardroom and a trading pit are just some of the accomodations patrons inside Stockholders can dine in after the opening bell is rung next week.

Ed Baker

A boardroom and a trading pit are just some of the accomodations patrons inside Stockholders can dine in after the opening bell is run next week.

The new restaurant inside the former Karma on Route 18 will also feature a sprawling Bulls ‘n Bears Bar, a Ponzi room, and a Dow Jones blue chip room for diners to enjoy while they whet their appetites.

“It is something unique,” said Kevin Hynes as he pointed to pictures of the New York Stock Exchange that will be displayed on the wall inside the trading pit. “It will bring back memories of people’s childhoods and it will make a nice atmosphere.”

The portraits will offer a pictorial history of the stock exchange from its beginnings in the late 1800s, including the infamous 1929 Black Friday crash and its present day operation.

A boardroom, complete with bookshelves, will offer patrons an executive setting.

“It will seat 40 people and be filled with books,” Hynes said.

The menus will include a variety of surf and turf dishes.

“Lunch menu prices will range between $6 to $12,” Hynes said. “The dinner menus will range from $15 to $20.”

He said that Stockholders would offer customers upscale service and food without them having to pay the high prices that a Boston restaurant often charges.

“What we are trying to do is to bring an upscale steakhouse to Weymouth without upscale prices,” Hynes said.

The menu’s appetizers, or opening bell, include 16 choices that range from Maryland lump crab cakes to grilled flatbread pizza of the day.

Seafood is listed under the Dow Jones Blue Chip Entrees and beef is available in the Nasdaq 1250 listing.

Hynes said that the steaks are cooked over an open oak fire pit.

“It will be the greatest steak that you will have in your entire life,” he said.

Hynes got his initial taste for working in the restaurant industry at the age of 14 while he was growing up in Weymouth when his late mother Norma, a waitress at the former Red Coach Grill in Hingham, asked him if he would wash dishes at the eatery on a Saturday night.

Shortly after arriving, Hynes met the late Bobby Hackett, a well-known South Shore executive chef.

“I continued to work at the restaurant through high school,” Hynes said.

Hackett taught Hynes how to operate every piece of equipment in the kitchen.

Hynes left the restaurant to serve a two-year stint in the Marine Corps upon graduating from high school and became a Weymouth police officer in 1972, but the urge to work in the food service industry never dissipated.

Hynes eventually met Richard Stilphen, a South Shore restaurateur, and he decided to leave the police department to open The Outside Inn in Kingston in 1982.

“If you want to be really successful in life, you have to take a chance,” Hynes said. “So I mortgaged my house, quit the police department, and bought my own restaurant.”

Hynes and Stilphen eventually opened Isaac’s in Plymouth in 1990, On the Green in East Bridgewater in 1994, and Stilphen’s Deniro’s Restaurant in Cohasset in 1996.

Hynes then went on to open Dilligner’s in Plymouth in 2003 by himself and The Inn at Bay Pointe in 1998.

He eventually sold all the restaurants he founded except for The Inn at Bay Pointe.

Hynes said that Stockholders would be co-owned by four people who have worked with him in various restaurants, and he wanted to help them achieve success.

“When you don’t have a lot of financial wherewithal, it’s impossible to be your own owner, especially with today’s prices,” Hynes said. “I have enough. I’m looking to help someone else.”

The co-owners include Chef Richard McInerney, of Weymouth, general manager Jeannie Russell of Bridgewater, Karen Newhall of East Bridgewater, and Sous Chef Scott Boragine of Plymouth.

Stockholders will host an invitation only grand opening with local officials to benefit Children’s Hospital on Aug. 20 at 7 p.m.

Mayor Susan Kay said she is glad that Hynes is opening a restaurant in Weymouth.

“He is coming home and we are thrilled to have him on Route 18,” she said. “Word is spreading about Stockholders and in a matter of time, people will be going to the restaurant.”

Kay said that Hynes has enjoyed success in all of the restaurants he has founded.

“His reputation alone encourages people from Weymouth to go to The Inn at Bay Pointe,” Kay said. “He has good chefs, and the meals are delicious and moderately priced.”